


World on Fire

by ReaperWriter



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Emotions, F/M, It's not easy being green, Song fic, Spoilers through 3X16, interspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-09
Updated: 2014-04-09
Packaged: 2018-01-18 19:13:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1439689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReaperWriter/pseuds/ReaperWriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He watches her, across the room at Granny’s.  Watches the rage and the hatred boil in her, coursing through her veins like poison.  He knows that look, has worn it for 300 years.  </p>
<p>Hooks thoughts throughout Episode 3X16, It's Not Easy Being Green</p>
            </blockquote>





	World on Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics and Title from "World on Fire" by Sarah McLachlan.
> 
> Not my characters, just borrowing.

_Hearts are worn in these dark ages_   
_You're not alone in this story's pages_   
_The light has fallen amongst the living and the dying_   
_And I'll try to hold it in, yeah I'll try to hold it in_

He watches her, across the room at Granny’s. Watches the rage and the hatred boil in her, coursing through her veins like poison. He knows that look, has worn it for 300 years. It’s only these last two years, the time she’s been in his life like a balm for his soul, that the heavy tar has receded, washed free by something other.

 

For a second, he remembers Bae. Not Neal, the man, but Bae the boy, trying so hard to be grown up, and how he wanted so much to protect Milah’s son. And then Neal as a man, doing everything he could to get to his son, to save him. He knows it no credit to him, but he feels proud of the man Neal became, of the father he tried to be. True, he hadn’t always done right by Emma, but from the moment he knew about Henry, he had committed 100% percent. Knowing that the boy doesn’t know, can’t remember his father, rips at a piece of his very tattered heart.

  
_The world's on fire and_   
_It's more than I can handle_   
_I'll tap into the water_   
_(Try and bring my share)_   
_I try to bring more_   
_More than I can handle_   
_(Bring it to the table)_   
_Bring what I am able_   


He walks up to her, watching her throw darts with a deadly accuracy into the board at the back of the room. He tries for the flippant suggestion, offers her rum, but it falls as flat as can be expected. So he does what he can: he listens. He lets his eye try to tell her what he can’t quite put into words, what she isn’t ready to hear. ‘I’m here. I came for you. I’ll stand by you.”

 

What comfort he can give comes through Henry, and the offer he makes to tell the boy about his father. He sees the surprise and then the memory of their conversation before, the last time they had toasted Neal’s memory. And he swears to keep this boy safe. Her eyes shine bright for a moment before the iron control slides back down. But if he looks closely, he can see the tiniest of gaps in the wall.

  
_I watch the heavens but I find no calling_   
_Something I can do to change what's coming_   
_Stay close to me while the sky is falling_   
_Don't wanna be left alone, don't wanna be alone_

At first, he has a hard time trying to frame his relationship with Neal…Bae… in a way that will make sense to Henry. The boy knows nothing of the real nature of this world, of magic, and how his father could have been a boy with this man who seems, if anything, a little younger than he thinks Neal would have been.

But at the heart of it, the thing that drew him to Bae is the same thing that drew him to Emma and now to this lad. An orphan is an orphan. True, the lad still had his mother…two even, though he didn’t know it. But there is something about growing up fatherless that he knows all too well. So he tells him about a boy he knew, long ago, who had lost his father tragically, just as Henry now has.  
  
  
 _Hearts break, hearts mend_  
 _Love still hurts_  
 _Visions clash, planes crash_  
 _Still there's talk of_  
 _Saving souls, still the cold_  
 _Is closing in on us_  


He knows he has to tell her the truth of that lost year. Where he was, what he did. To give her answers. But a part of him is caught in a snare, because he also swore once that he would not bring her to him by trickery. And he fears that telling her what he sacrificed will make her love the gift, not the giver.

 

But tonight, looking at Henry’s brown hair, and kind smile, he can’t help but love someone who is part of Milah, of Bae, and most of all, part of Emma. It’s her courage and spirit that shine in the boy. He said once that only love and revenge were worth dying for. He just hadn’t reckoned on how wide of a circle love would become for him.

  
_We part the veil on our killer sun_  
 _Stray from the straight line on this short run_  
 _The more we take, the less we become_  
 _The fortune of one that means less for some_  
  
Standing there, outside her door, he wishes. On stars, on his lucky necklace, on Liam’s memory. Wishes she would open up enough to let him truly take more of her burden. Let him help carry her load. Know that she doesn’t have to do this alone. But he doesn’t press. It’s taken him 300 years and leagues of heartache to get her. He can wait a little longer. One thing he has always been, always had to spare was patience.

 


End file.
